<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Sympathy for the Devil? by PrettyPinkCupcake</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29084178">Sympathy for the Devil?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyPinkCupcake/pseuds/PrettyPinkCupcake'>PrettyPinkCupcake</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Rigel Black Chronicles - Fandom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Inspired by The Rigel Black Chronicles, Post TFF14, Rigel Black Chronicles Masquerade 2021</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:14:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,555</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29084178</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyPinkCupcake/pseuds/PrettyPinkCupcake</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Caelum had spent weeks — no months — waiting to talk to Harriet Potter about his experiences with Shaped Imbuing.  But when Caelum finally sees her after the final task of the Triwizard tournament, things do not go the way he expected.</p>
<p>*FF14 SPOILERS - maybe?*</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Caelum Lestrange &amp; Harriet Potter | Rigel Black</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>97</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Rigel Black Chronicles Masquerade 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sympathy for the Devil?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=All+the+Caelum-Harry+shippers">All the Caelum-Harry shippers</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the 2021 Rigel Black Chronicles Masquerade.</p>
<p>I'm not normally a Caelum-Harry shipper - or am I?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Caelum stumbled out of Tate’s apothecary and blindly made his way to the Floo in the Leaky Cauldron, desperate to get back to Dartmoor Castle as quickly as possible.</p>
<p>That did <em>not </em>go the way he expected.</p>
<p>Caelum’s words to Harriet Potter, while admittedly not particularly pleasant, were not, as far as he was aware, in any way different to the words and tone he had <em>always </em>used with her. As per their normal routine, Caelum insulted her appearance, (ignoring that he found her new looks surprisingly pleasant — so much more attractive than her previous appearance that he felt she’d even give a few of the pureblood ladies he knew a run for their money and she wasn’t wearing anything special, just her standard brewing robes, although he did wonder why she was wearing trainers and not her normal brewing boots), smirked at her and debased her halfblood status. All as per usual.</p>
<p>But this time, instead of the playful banter Caelum had been expecting — nay looking forward to, if he was to be at all truthful — Potter responded in a way she never had before. She scowled at him, gritted her teeth and while she challenged his world view, she did so in a way she’d never done before. Potter <em>hit back </em>at his biting words. Her tone was hard and there was no longer any playfulness in it. She didn’t take his harsh and deliberately nasty words on the chin and gently call him out on his bigotry — instead Potter struck back in a way she never had before and then, finally, she <em>rejected </em>him.</p>
<p>“Teaching you was a mistake,” she said, then left.</p>
<p>Caelum would <em>never </em>admit how Potter’s words hurt him — as much, if not more, than his mother’s many rejections and harsh words ever did, and his mother certainly did not abide by the maxim if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything. Quite the opposite, in fact.</p>
<p>Caelum had spent weeks — no months — waiting to talk to Harriet Potter about his experiences with Shaped Imbuing. Caelum, although he would certainly <em>never </em>tell Potter, had struggled long and hard before he finally mastered Potter’s new imbuing technique. Potter had made it seem effortless, but it was far from effortless for him. So when Caelum at last found that he could, indeed, Shaped Imbue, he could envisage so many, many, different ways in which this technique could be used to expand the field of potions beyond what anyone had ever dreamed of, and he just wanted to talk to someone about his ideas. He wanted to share his thoughts on developing new potions to do amazing things.</p>
<p>And Potter was the person he most wanted to talk to. No one else Caelum knew, other than Potter and Master Snape (and as much as he’d like to be on speaking terms with Master Snape, he wasn’t, not to mention the fact that it was well known within the Potions Guild <em>never </em>to bother Master Snape during the school year), could Shaped Imbue. Master Whitaker couldn’t, and Caelum hadn’t heard of any other Potions Masters who could, not even Master Thompson — and Thompson had been Potter’s mentor during the internship.</p>
<p>Certainly, none of the other Potions apprentices could Shaped Imbue. Not that Caelum wasted any time speaking with them. Imbeciles, the lot of them. They never had anything interesting or worthwhile to say, not even on the topic of potions, and very few of them could even accomplish Indirect Stirring, a very <em>basic </em>technique for a Potions Master. If the future of potioneering relied on this cohort of apprentices, then the future of potioneering was grim indeed.</p>
<p>None of those absolute imbeciles would have been able to combine Shaped Imbuing with Caelum’s alterations to the Inferi Raising Potion (and wasn’t Caelum lucky to have covered Inferi and their creation at Durmstrang) to develop a potion that could create a body for a bodiless spirit. What a ride that had been. The research, the discussions he’d had with those secretive academics and dark wizards, picking their brains for clues whilst keeping his true purpose secret. What a magnificent intellectual <em>challenge</em>. Caelum had advanced potions in a way no one else had. No one else he knew could claim to have developed such a potion.</p>
<p>At the back of his mind he vaguely remembered Potter’s reluctance (abhorrence, if he was being honest with himself) to the idea of brewing Coquere Cerebrum, one of the most challenging potions that could ever be brewed, requiring not only rare ingredients but two extremely competent potioneers, and the thought almost crossed his mind (albeit <em>extremely </em>briefly) that she wouldn’t approve of the Body Construction Potion — but this was about potions. It was overcoming the challenge that was important. Caelum was advancing what potions could do. It was not like <em>he </em>was ever going to raise Inferi or embody a bodiless spirit.</p>
<p>Caelum would <em>never</em>, <em>ever, ever</em>, admit to anyone, about how he felt when his parents were impressed with his ability to Shaped Imbue. Or how pleased his parents were — even his mother! — when he’d delivered the Body Construction Potion to Barty Crouch Jr, and how <em>good </em>this made him feel. Proof that he was not as worthless as his mother had suggested.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, those pleasant memories of that much longed for praise were sullied by the people who had ultimately used and abused his potions, and worse, used and abused him for their own nefarious purposes. Caelum had <em>not </em>been pleased when his precious  Liberespirare potion had been almost forcibly taken from him (yet another thing he would never concede, though how he wished he’d never boasted to Barty Crouch Jr about how he’d brewed  Liberespirare, one of the top forty difficult potions) and used in the tournament by the filthy mudblood contestant, even if the filthy mudblood used it against Caelum’s much despised second cousin, Rigel Black.</p>
<p>And then to find out that his precious invention, his Body Construction Potion, was used to create a body for a <em>halfblood</em>, and what was worse, the incompetents who failed to tell Caelum that the potion was for a halfblood also failed at their ritual because their target, Rigel Black, was not actually his pureblood blood traitor relation but was instead a filthy halfblood <em>imposter </em>who got to go to Hogwarts when Caelum, a full pureblood was shunted off to Durmstrang — well, that took away from some of what Caelum felt towards his Body Construction Potion. Caelum had been duped, his potions masterpiece made to look worthless, and that was not a feeling that Caelum Lestrange liked.</p>
<p>Caelum couldn’t understand why Potter was upset with him, why she’d reacted so, so, nastily, when she never acted like this previously — in fact it was Potter who had forced <em>her </em>“friendship” onto him. Sure, Caelum wasn’t exactly happy about his unintended role in the Triwizard Tournament (he had been basically forced to give up his precious  Liberespirare potion, and he had been duped about the use of his precious invention by incompetents who had botched everything but his potion), but what did it have to do with Potter? Why would she care? It was not like Caelum’s actions affected <em>her </em>in any way.</p>
<p>Presumably Potter still had her dose of  Liberespirare and could still do with it whatever she chose. She hadn’t shared her  Liberespirare potion with her pseudo cousin. Reportedly Potter <em>was </em>close to Arcturus, the real Black Heir and son of Lord Potter’s best friend, the boy Potter had given up her education — albeit at a second rate American institution — for, but “Rigel Black” wasn’t even Potter’s pseudo cousin.</p>
<p>Rather, “Black” was a halfblood imposter. A halfblood imposter who embarrassingly rejected Caelum Lestrange in front of pureblood heirs, and an imposter who made fools out of Lord Riddle and all of Pureblood Society, someone who deserved condemnation. A nameless unknown who had vanished after the tournament. Why would Potter care if Caelum did things against Rigel Black? Unless she felt sympathy for him as a fellow halfblood? Not that Caelum could understand that — he hadn’t felt any sympathy for any of the Pureblood competitors in the tournament, and that Chinese Pureblood had had a bad experience in the second task.</p>
<p>Potter might not be like other girls — in fact he liked her considerably more than most, if not all, of the pureblood girls that he had known over the years, and certainly more than the insipid types his mother kept introducing him to — but that didn’t make Potter any more comprehensible to Caelum, nor did it make Potter’s new, and significantly less friendly, attitude any easier to deal with. Caelum was, unusually for him, at a loss; he didn’t really have anyone he could talk to about this situation with Potter, he didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t like that.</p>
<p>Caelum could only hope that the next time he saw Potter, she would be in a better mood. Perhaps he would even deign to attempt to be a bit more pleasant, maybe even put to use some of those dreadful polite practices that he abhorred. Unlike Caelum, Potter did have contact with Master Snape, and Caelum didn’t want to miss out on any advances those two came up with. Or so he kept telling himself.</p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>